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February 20, 2012

Happy President's Day! This post has absolutely nothing to do with President's Day, but nonetheless, I hope all of you in the US had a wonderful 3-day weekend. Now on with the post...

Way before college, back in elementary school, I was already a budding science nerd. But my fascination with science was on a larger scale (as opposed to my college focus on molecular and cell biology), leaning more towards things that could be seen by the naked eye, like animals, plants, the rainforest, and fossils. One topic that really captured my attention was outer space. I was obsessed with anything and everything related to it: the stars, the moon, planets, black holes, comets, etc.

Today's post is inspired by that childhood interest in outer space. Beyond science, stars in particular were interesting to me as they formed bright connect-the-dot images in the night sky, appealing to my visual nature. Moreover, tying in Greek and Roman mythology, each constellation has its own story, which made them all the more fascinating. Thus, I really wanted to base a baking project on constellations. Since blueberries go so well with cheesecake, I thought I could play around with a recipe and make something constellation related with a blueberry glaze acting as the night sky.

What I ended up with was this recipe. They're basically simple mini cheesecakes, but instead of baking them in muffin liners, I made them in mini tart pans, forming cheesecake tarts (which also increases the crust to filling ratio, and as I've mentioned before, I'm a crust person). I strained my preserves and added a bit of gelatin to the jam glaze so that it would set smoothly, giving me a flat surface to decorate. And finally, I made many little white chocolate stars to place on top of each cheesecake in the form of a variety of constellations, completing my constellation cheesecake tarts.

Mix the graham cracker crumbs with the sugar. Add the melted butter and mix. The crust mixture should have the texture of wet sand. Take the mixture and press into tart pans sprayed with nonstick spray. Preheat oven to 375°F.

For small tarts, I used 3-inch diameter tart pans (9th item down on left in link), like the ones used for egg tarts. If you choose to skip the crust on the rim, and use 2 1/2 tbsp crust mixture in each cup. If you want the rim crust, use 3 tbsp crumb mixture in each cup. (It's up to you whether you want that rim crust or not. It can be a bit difficult to press the mixture into a crust on such a small cup, so if you want the easier way, skip the rim crust.)

For large tarts, I used aluminum pot pie pans. For these large tarts, used 4 1/2-5 tbsp of crumb mixture per pan. Bake the small crusts for 5 minutes and the large crusts for 7 minutes. Let the crusts cool before adding filling.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix cream cheese with sugar. Add in eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition. Mix in the vanilla extract. Bake tarts for 20-30 minutes. They're ready once the filling is set.

Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack. (Don't worry if the filling puffs up in the oven. It'll fall back down once cooled. And cracks will be covered up by the glaze.)

Put the strained preserves in a small saucepan. Add 1 tbsp water to the preserves. Mix in the food coloring so the preserves are more blurple than reddish purple. In a separate bowl, mix the gelatin and 1 tbsp water together so that all the gelatin grains are wet.

Place the saucepan over low heat. Add the wet gelatin. Heat the mixture until all the gelatin is dissolved. Then remove from heat. Let cool a few minutes to slightly thicken. Pour the glaze over each cheesecake tart and use a spoon to spread the glaze so that all the cream cheese is covered and only the crust is visible.

Cool the glazed cheesecakes in the refrigerator a few hours for the glaze to set.

Melt your white chocolate. Place a dot of white chocolate on a piece of parchment paper. Quickly, use the toothpick to push the dot of chocolate in five directions to form the five arms of the star as shown in the illustration above. Allow to dry. Lightly press on the back of the parchment paper to release the stars for use.

Place stars on the glazed cheesecakes like in the illustration above. If you don't position it exactly as you want it, take a toothpick and lightly push on the side of a star to move it around. (For large tarts, use the first photo in this post with the little and big dipper or use multiple constellations of your own choice).

Once the stars are positioned, melt the white chocolate and use a toothpick to draw the lines between the stars with the melted chocolate. Finally, take the leftover stars and place them randomly on each cheesecake to fill the empty space.

32 comments:

Thanks! Making the stars wasn't as tough as it looks. It took a little practice to figure out a good technique for moving the toothpick around to tranform the chocolate blobs into stars, but after a few, it was pretty quick.

Absolutely gorgeous post! Love the idea and the creativity behind it! That little instructional drawing on how to make the stars is really cool! I totally appreciate all the work that went into making these! Thanks for sharing this with us...

These are utterly amazing! I'm also a biologist (though I'm more on the marine and ecology side of things) but used to be fascinated by space when I was younger (actually I still find it fascinating!). I find your creativity so inspiring!!

Now look, you TOTALLY rocked this dessert. I love it! And if you don't mind, I just might "steal it" and use it at an upcoming party that I'll produce. It's creative, looks really cool, and I can just tell - it tastes fantastic too!

Do you have an RSS feed subscription area/button/widget, whatever? I'd love to subscribe! Going to look for it. Because maybe I overlooked it. ???

Thank you. I think a muffin pan could work, just that it might be a bit more difficult pressing the crust/removing them from the pan, but it's always worth a shot (just make sure you spray the pans well so the crusts don't stick).

If you're in the US, Keebler makes Mini Graham Cracker Crusts that already come in small aluminum pans that I've seen in the baking section in grocery stores and in some drugstores. They aren't as small as my mini tarts (their size falls somewhere in between the size of my mini and larger tarts).

Or if you'd rather make the larger tarts, I found my disposable aluminum pot pie pans at Safeway with the other aluminum bakeware. (For pies, I tend to use disposable bakeware since I don't make them all that often.)

This is a very creatie project...I am homeschooling my toddler so I am in search of really cool activities at home, (by the way she really loves kitchen activities)This will be very helpful we she matures and will be ready for advanced science lessons...Page, bookrmarked. Thanks for sharing.

Susan - these cheesecakes are crazy good! Well done, major effort! Looking fwd to following your blog now I've foudn you, maybe you can follow mine if you like what you see? Cheers to a good year ahead! CQx

Making the starts didn't take that long once I got the hang of flicking the toothpick to make the points. And placing the stars wasn't too difficult since I was basically copying the constellation picture above.